John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (30 September 1906 – 12 November 1994) was a Scottish novelist and academic. He is equally well known for the works of literary criticism and contemporary novels published under his real name and for the crime fiction published under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Many devotees of the Innes books were unaware of his other "identity", and vice versa.

Between 1936 and 1986, Stewart, writing under the pseudonym of Michael Innes, published nearly fifty crime novels and short story collections, which he later described as "entertainments".[1] These abound in literary allusions and in what critics have variously described as "mischievous wit", "exuberant fancy" and a "tongue-in-cheek propensity" for intriguing turns of phrase.[1][2]Julian Symons identified Innes as one of the "farceurs"—crime writers for whom the detective story was "an over-civilized joke with a frivolity which makes it a literary conversation piece with detection taking place on the side"—and described Innes's writing as being "rather in the manner of Peacock strained through or distorted by Aldous Huxley".[3] His mysteries have also been described as combining "the elliptical introspection ... [of] a Jamesian character's speech, the intellectual precision of a Conradian description, and the amazing coincidences that mark any one of Hardy's plots".[1]

The best-known of Innes's detective creations is Sir John Appleby, who is introduced in Death at the President's Lodging, in which he is a Detective Inspector at Scotland Yard. Appleby features in many of the later novels and short stories, in the course of which he rises to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Other novels feature portrait painter and Royal Academician, Charles Honeybath, an amateur but nonetheless effective sleuth. The two detectives meet in Appleby and Honeybath. Some of the later stories feature Appleby's son Bobby as sleuth.

In 2007, his family transferred all the Innes copyrights and other legal rights to Owatonna Media. Owatonna Media on-sold these copyrights to Coolabi Plc in 2009, but retained a master licence in radio and audio rights.[4] Literary rights are currently held by John Stewart Literary Management, and published by House of Stratus.[5]